Welcome to BlogHub: the Best in Veteran and Emerging Classic Movie Blogs
You can rate and share your favorite classic movie posts here.
You can rate and share your favorite classic movie posts here.
Kindergarten Cop 2 (2016, Don Michael Paul)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 10, 2016
Kindergarten Cop 2 doesn’t provoke a lot of reaction. It’s terrible, sure, it’s incompetent in parts, it’s got a lousy script and some really bad acting, but why wouldn’t it? It’s a direct-to-video sequel twenty-six years after the first entry, has nothing to do read more
The Thirteenth Floor (1999, Josef Rusnak)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 10, 2016
It’d be hard to call The Thirteenth Floor a missed opportunity because that statement suggests there was some promise to it. There’s no promise anywhere near Thirteenth Floor. But it does have some gorgeous set decoration and, presumably, production design from Kirk M. Petruccelli. The read more
Three Kings (1999, David O. Russell)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 9, 2016
Three Kings ought to appeal to every one of my liberal affections–director Russell very seriously wants to look at the Gulf War and how it failed the people it should have been protecting. Over and over, Russell goes out of his way to make the American soldiers take responsibility. Not for th read more
Dances with Wolves (1990, Kevin Costner)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 8, 2016
From the start, director Costner embrues Dances with Wolves with melancholic tragedy. Even as Costner’s protagonist–a Union soldier reassigned to the frontier–travels west, seeing startling natural beauty, which Costner and cinematographer Dean Semler visualize carefully, enthusia read more
Café Society (2016, Woody Allen)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 8, 2016
Woody Allen opens Café Society himself, with a voiceover. It’s a deeper voice mix than usual for Allen–who doesn’t appear in the film–and even though he’s doing expository narration, there’s an intentional distance in that deeper voice. Allen’s not the star read more
The Tiger: An Old Hunter’s Tale (2015, Park Hoon-jung)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 7, 2016
The Tiger: An Old Hunter’s Tale is a rather ambitious piece of work from director Park. Maybe too ambitious. It’s not just about juxtaposing old aged hunter Choi Min-sik against the last tiger in Korea (the film’s set during Japanese occupation when the Japanese were having all th read more
JFK (1991, Oliver Stone)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 7, 2016
JFK is a protracted experience. It runs over three hours, it has no real narrative structure–the film opens with the Kennedy assassination and an introduction to the principal characters (and some of the possible conspirators, always played quite well by a guest star), then jumps ahead three read more
Seven (1995, David Fincher)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 7, 2016
Seven is a gorgeous film. It’s often a really stupid film, but it’s a gorgeous film. Even when it’s being stupid, it’s usually gorgeous. Director Fincher has a beautiful precision to his composition; he works great with photographer Darius Khondji, editor Richard Francis-Bru read more
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991, James Cameron)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 7, 2016
Director James Cameron opens Terminator 2: Judgment Day with a couple things the audience has to think about when watching the film and isn’t going to see or hear again for a while, so they need to have it in mind to recall it later. Because Terminator 2 is an amazing kind of sequel to the or read more
Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 7, 2016
There’s a lot of great moments in Pulp Fiction. There’s not a lot of great filmmaking–the taxi ride conversation between Bruce Willis and Angela Jones is about as close as director Tarantino gets to it–but there are definitely a lot of great moments. There’s the chemis read more
Suicide Squad (2016, David Ayer)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 6, 2016
Suicide Squad is a terrible film. It’s poorly directed, it’s poorly written, it’s poorly acted (some of the bad acting is the fault of the script, which doesn’t have a good moment in it, some of it’s just the actors), it’s terribly photographed, edited, it’ read more
Sullivan’s Travels (1941, Preston Sturges)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 2, 2016
Sullivan’s Travels is almost impossibly well-constructed. Director Sturges, editor Stuart Gilmore and photographer John F. Seitz go through various, entirely different narrative devices and do them all perfectly. Whether it’s a high speed chase, Veronica Lake having a screwball comedy s read more
Batman: The Killing Joke (2016, Sam Liu)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 1, 2016
There’s a lot to be said about Batman: The Killing Joke, both the comic book and its animated adaptation. It’s another of Alan Moore’s unintentional curses on mainstream comics; listening to his dialogue spoken… it’s clear he was hurrying through the Batman stuff. Or K read more
Mothra 3: King Ghidorah Attacks (1998, Yoneda Okihiro)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 1, 2016
Mothra 3: King Ghidorah Attacks is simultaneously accessible but also one for the Mothra fans, which is a bit of a weird thing to think about. The film presupposes there are going to be dedicated Mothra fans in the audience and gears a lot of references towards them–at the moment I was apprec read more
Firestarter (1984, Mark L. Lester)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 1, 2016
If I tried really hard, would I be able to think of something nice to say about Firestarter? I was going to complement some of Tangerine Dream’s score–not all of it, but some of it–but it turns out it’s not so much a score as a selection of otherwise unreleased Tangerine Dre read more
Love on the Run (1936, W.S. Van Dyke)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jul 28, 2016
Joan Crawford is top-billed in Love on the Run. Unfortunately, she has absolutely nothing to do in the entire film. Maybe if Clark Gable had something to do besides deceiving everyone (and then rescuing Crawford) the movie might make it through better, but he doesn’t. Love on the Run is eight read more
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993, Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jul 26, 2016
There are a lot of excellent things in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, but maybe my favorite thing is the end credits music. It’s smooth jazz. It’s this smooth jazz love song over the cast and when you see names like Abe Vigoda and Dick Miller and John P. Ryan in an animated Batman movie, read more
Keanu (2016, Peter Atencio)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jul 25, 2016
Keanu. Keanu is a movie about a missing kitten named Keanu. Keanu is so cute, no one can see him without falling in love with him; Keanu isn’t just the world’s cutest kitten, he’s the world’s sweetest kitten too. You might wonder why I’m almost fifty words in and haven read more
The Saint (1997, Phillip Noyce)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jul 25, 2016
The Saint is a delightful mess of a film. Director Noyce toggles between doing a Bond knock-off while a romantic adventure picture. Val Kilmer’s international, high-tech cat burglar falls for one of his marks, Elisabeth Shue’s genius scientist. Jonathan Hensleigh and Wesley Strick’ read more
The Player (1992, Robert Altman)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jul 24, 2016
Whatever his faults (and faulty films), Robert Altman never bought into what anyone said about him–not his critics, not his audience. The Player is an overtly hostile outing. Altman never had much nice to say about the film, as I recall, but he doesn’t try to say nice things with the fi read more